How do make a quilt you don't love? With fabric colors you don't understand? Well, it takes time and a little extra effort but it can be done. A friend of mine called me and asked if I could make her a quilt for her soon to arrive grandson. I said "OF COURSE, I'd love to!" Well what's the big deal, I make quilt all the time right? However, when she told me the colors, I was worried. She told me that the nursery was this beautiful room that looked like something out of a designer magazine. The quilt needed to be gray, white, yellow and teal with some black. For the life of me I could NOT picture this quilt. I broke out in a cold sweat and for the first time did not know what to do.
The next day I decided to put on my big girl pants and started working on Xander's Quilt.
The first thing I did was look for images on Google with these colors. I found a lot, but I didn't like some of it but when I kept looking I found some I loved. That was the secret, to find these color that I would probably never use together working together and looking amazing.
I really liked the pillow and all the colors worked! So I started getting fabric. It wasn't easy. These colors were "in" but in a much muted pallet. I needed bold. I found a fabric group called Gray Matters by Jacqueline Savage McFee for Camelot Cottons. The group had yellow, gray and the white I needed. Some of the collection was light but some were that bold rich color I needed.
Next, I started to think about the teal. So I called my friend back again and asked about the shade of teal. She told me more details about the nursery . She told me the room had wood on one wall and teal on another and gave me the color number of the teal paint they used. She sent me a picture of the nursery. It was a very dark teal and once again, I was stuck.
What a beautiful room for a little boy! So I started to shop for teal fabric and could not find a teal as dark as the paint but close. So I bought a range of teal colors that matched and I felt ready.
Now it was time to start piecing. I must say my first 50 tries were awful! I wish I had pictures to show you, but they were just so ugly. One of the mistakes I made was I didn't wash the fabric because I knew they were just samples. The problem with not wash the fabric was I didn't have the opportunity to have a relationship with the fabric. (another secret) So I started over. I washed the fabric. Then pressed and starched the fabric. I got to know the fabric a little better and started to see its beauty and what it wanted to be when it grew up. Then all the pieces came together.
This quilt turned out so wonderful that I had a hard time parting with it when it was done. I loved it in the end. Of course, that's why I quilt, its art we love.
Ready to quilt
Happy Quilting
